More than 100 physicists from around the world will meet at Ohio State
University at the end of July to define the research program for a major
new proposed physics laboratory.
This new facility is the key item in a long-range plan for nuclear physics
research prepared for the federal funding agencies. It is also at the top
of the list for new facility construction by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The meeting, sponsored by the Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories
and hosted by Ohio State, will focus on the "Isospin Laboratory,"
a nuclear physics facility that will be able to produce beams of short-lived,
unstable nuclei. The proposed project would be expected to cost about $150
million.
Richard Boyd, professor of physics and associate dean of the College of
Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Ohio State, said more than 50 presentations
will be given during the three-day meeting (7/30 to 8/1) at the Fawcett
Center for Tomorrow, 2400 Olentangy River Road.
At the end of the meeting, a core group of physicists will convene to draft
a "white paper" for the Department of Energy proposing uses of
the new facility and directions for new research.
Boyd said the meeting is the latest in a progression that began seven years
ago as researchers sought to define the future of nuclear physics. While
physicists have shown that more than 300 stable atomic nuclei exist, and
another 2,000 or so are unstable but have been produced and studied, several
thousand more have been proposed by theoreticians but have not yet been
proven to exist.
"The proposed new facility would play a major role in allowing researchers
to search for and study these nuclei," Boyd said. "It would allow
nuclear physicists to study many new nuclei that could not be made with
any of the world's existing facilities."
Research at the new facility could play a major role in understanding the
processes that occur in the centers of stars, and answer a host of questions
as to how stars evolve and produce a multitude of elements. The studies
also would extend nuclear physics studies to a new realm, possibly leading
to the discovery of entirely new nuclear processes and phenomena in the
areas of nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics.
As with other nuclear physics facilities, researchers would aim a beam of
particles at a dense target. When particles in the beam and target collide,
researchers are able to study the interactions that occur in the nucleus
of the atoms.
Boyd said this facility would differ from others in that the "beam"
is actually a secondary beam composed of short-lived nuclei produced upstream
by the interaction of an accelerated primary beam of nuclei with a target
that is chosen to create the secondary beam of interest. A second accelerator
then creates the energy of the secondary beam needed for the research, Boyd
said.
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Contact: Richard Boyd, (614) 292-2874; Boyd.10@osu.edu
Written by Earle Holland; Holland.8@osu.edu